(Peter le), was born at Chaumont in Bassigny, A.D. 1602, and died at Paris August 22, 1672, aged 70. He joined the society of Jesuits, and enjoyed several offices among them. He is chiefly known by his verses, which were collected into one volume folio in 1671. Father le Moine is the first of the French poets belonging to that famous society, who acquired reputation by this species of writing. It cannot be denied that this poet possessed genius and fancy; but his imagination was ungoverned, which is particularly the case in his poem of Saint Louis. De-

spreaux, when asked his opinion of this poet, replied, "That he was too extravagant for praise, and too much a poet for censure." To give his character in one word, he was a pedant who had a lively imagination without taste, and who, far from restraining his impetuous genius, abandoned himself without reserve to its direction. Hence his gigantic figures, his crowd of metaphors, his ridiculous antitheses, his hyperbolic expressions, &c. This Jesuit somewhere says, "that the water of the river on the banks of which he had composed his verses, was so admirably qualified to make poets, that though it were converted into holy water, it would not protect a man against the demon of poetry." The prose of father le Moine is in the same brilliant and bombastic style. Senault, a father of the oratory, used to say of him, that he was Balzac in a theatrical dress. Among his prose works are, 1. La Devotion aifee, Paris, 1652, 8vo; an extraordinary book which produced more mirth than devotion. 2. Pensées Morales. On these two books the reader may consult Pascals ninth and tenth provincial letters. 3. A short Treatise on History, in 12mo, in which we find many pleasant and curious thoughts mixed with a good deal of common-place.

(Stephen le), a very learned French minister of the Protestant religion, was born at Caen in 1624. He became extremely skilled in the Greek, Latin, and Oriental tongues, and professed divinity with high reputation at Leyden, in which city he died in 1689. Several dissertations of his are printed together, and intitled Varia Sacra, in 2 vols 4to; besides which, he wrote other works.

(Francis le), an excellent French painter, was born at Paris in 1688, and trained up under Galloche professor of the academy of painting; which office he himself afterwards filled. Le Moine painted the grand saloon which is at the entrance into the apartments of Versailles, and which represents the apotheosis of Hercules. He was four years about it; and the king, to show how well pleased he was with it, made him his first painter in 1736, and gave him a pension of 4000 livres. A fit of lunacy seized this painter the year after; during which he run himself through with his sword, and died, June 4, 1737, aged 49.